David Lynch’s film maudit—anambitious adaptation of
Frank Herbert’s gargantuan sci-fi masterpiece about the
interplanetary struggle of the Atreides to control the valuable
spice mélange on the desert planet Arrakis and the young man
(MacLachlan) proclaimed to be a messiah by its inhabitants—was a
box-office disaster on its release, but can now be appreciated as
an almost avant-visionary mind-fuck, replete with “imagery as
disturbing as anything in Eraserhead” (Dave Kehr).